Family, friends mourn slain Plainfield taxi driver

PLAINFIELD — A rainbow of brightly painted Town Cars and Crown Victorias lined the curb in front of the Plainfield police station Tuesday afternoon to show support for a taxi driver who authorities said died after being shot in the head.

Plainfield resident Isidro Leonardo, 44, had driven a taxi in the city for at least four years, friends and family members said. The Dominican native had lived in Plainfield for about eight years, family said.

Leonardo’s wife and two young sons were surrounded by tearful relatives as they left the police station Tuesday afternoon.

“He was a good man. He never had any trouble,” Maria Santana said of her husband with help from a translator. “He never even went to a bar to drink or anything. He just went from his job to his house, and that’s it.”

At 5:51 a.m. Tuesday, police responded to a 911 call on the 200 block of Spooner Avenue in the city’s West End. There they found Leonardo in the driver’s seat of his taxi with a head wound, county prosecutor Theodore Romankow said in a prepared statement.

Leonardo was rushed to Robert Wood Johnson University Hospital where he died six hours later, Romankow said.

Investigators were trying to determine a motive for the shooting and had made no arrests Tuesday evening.

“Everyone deserves to live and work in peace and those who seek to disrupt this way of life will be captured and prosecuted,” Romankow said in the statement.

Leonardo was the second shooting victim in Plainfield Tuesday.

At 1:33 a.m., police responded to the 1600 block of South 2nd Street, where they found a 26-year-old Plainfield man who had been shot three times in the back, police director Martin Hellwig said.

The man told police he was driving a car on Brokaw Avenue when he was shot for no apparent reason and crashed into a parked vehicle. The man was uncooperative with police and did not explain how he got to the South Street location, Hellwig said. He was taken to Robert Wood Johnson University Hospital with non-life-threatening injuries, Hellwig said.

Leonardo, who worked for United Taxi, was mourned by cab drivers from three different companies. They said this was the first death they could remember, but noted the job is dangerous.

“There’s many problems in Plainfield for the yellow cab,” said Nelson Brito, who has driven in Plainfield for two years and counted Leonardo as one of his friends. He said many fares do not want to pay when they reach their destination.

The drivers said they would continue rallying to denounce the violence. Santana, upset with a lack of information about the case, said she hoped the incident would spur law enforcement in the city.

Romankow asked anyone with information about the homicide to call Detective Kevin Grimmer at (908) 447-3777. The Union County Crime Stoppers at (908) 654-TIPS is also offering a reward of up to $5,000 for information leading to the arrest and indictment of the person or persons responsible for Leonardo’s death.